Hays Views on Gatsby Essay

Hays, Peter L. Oxymoron in The Great Gatsby. Papers on Language & literature 47.3 (2011) 318+. General OneFile. Web. 19 Oct. 2012. There are significant paradoxes with by F. Scott Fitzgeralds (life and) work frequently represented by oxymorons, of which Wolfsheims eating with ferocious dainty (75) is simply atomic number 53 of the most apparent and, as such(prenominal), genuinely possibly a clue to the paradoxes in the novel. Kirk Curnutt in a review of Fitzgeralds concise stories remarks that the titles Flappers and Philosophers and Taps at Reveille are clever conceits whose effectiveness depends upon ones fondness for oxymoron (157). Keith Gandal, in a recent take for, writes of Gatsbys famous doubleness as chivalrous lover and cold-blooded killer. Gandal continues, though I am using his words for a different purpose than his His doubleness may have a mainstream large historical correlative (119).(1) One prominent instance of doubleness is evident in his approach to Dais y in the novel.Could a man who knew women earlyI presume knew them in the Biblical senseand since they spoiled him he became contemptuous of them (104), be so intimidated by Daisy, especi whollyy since hes already slept with her (156)? Could someone so ruthless in some(prenominal) the army and business be so timid in dating? Gatsby is plainly non a sexual impeccant afraid of sex, another nearly 40-year-old virgin. Far from it. He has had five years of tutelage under Dan Cody, sailing three times around the continent, having women rub champagne in his hair, and visiting the Barbary Coast (106-07), which Matthew J. Bruccoli glosses in his notes to the novel as San Franciscos honky tonk district (213), plainly a euphemism. We dont know what Gatsby did for the undermentioned five years (from Codys death in 1912 until Americas entrance into the war in 1917 106), but thereafter he rose through officer ranks to become a major in the army during World War I and then briefly attended Oxf ord. Are we to expect that he led a celibate life all those years except for his one brief contest with Daisy? There is, of course, a social gap amongst him and Daisy, and this causes him insecurity in approaching her and proposing that they start their life over.But he did date her before and successfully seduced her. And at Oxford he must have met women of a social status comparable to Daisys. In addition, he now foolishly believes that the property he has earned erases much of that social gap so that no one will think, as he tells break a commission, that I was just some nobody (71), some kind of cheap frostyer (145). He also believes, erroneously, that in social situations, as opposed to business ones, he must not do anything out of the way (84). That being the case, one has to wonder what he and Daisy do on their afternoons together at his house. Nevertheless, Fitzgerald has established him both as a regular tough (84), someone who looked like he had killed a man, and a r eally proper and timid individual on social and sexual matters, or as Fitzgerald himself phrases it, an elegant roughneck (53), another oxymoron. What constrains Gatsby is his extreme romanticism, his belief in the American myth that one, through hard work, can achieve anything, whether reliving the past or marrying Daisy in proper social splendor in Louisville so as to confirm his rise in American society (see the paraphrase of Poor Richards Almanac and Horatio Alger at the end of the novel).He wants nothing to tarnish his exaltation of marrying Daisy in society, the perfect couple on top of the wedding cake, and he wants the social acceptance and respect denied him at St. Olaf College (105) and by the Sloanes and Buchanans of the world. What has happened, of course, is that following his seduction of Daisy and one special kiss, he wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath and the incarnation was complete (117). The religious language, particularly for one raised as a Catholic, as Fitzgerald was, is telling. Daisy embodies the idea of perfection for Gatsby, an almost unapproachable i argue of social success and self-realization. Thus his Grail is the unreality of reality (105), another paradox, and as turkey cock attacks him in the suite of the Plaza Hotel, only the dead dream fought on as the afternoon slipped away (142). But there are other contradictions as well, such as the characterization of Wolfsheim as a sentimental crook (77), and Gatsbys facial expression, definitely unfamiliar and vaguely recognizable (127). Throughout there is Gatsbys real criminal corruption fronting his romantic incorruptible dream (162). pass, too, has his doublenesses. Initially Nicks father tells him that all the people in this world harbort had the advantages youve had (5), presumably material advantages. But Nick interprets the statement to mean a sense of fundamental decencies is parcelled out unequally at birth(6), something very different, and a belief th at qualifies Nick very much as a snob. Nick praises himself for honesty after writing the woman others believe him engaged to, because of his affair with Jordan Baker (63), but he doesnt bother writing her two pages earlier while hes conducting a relationship with a young woman from the accounting division of his bank, incongruously named Probity Trust the reason is obvious the girl from accounting is clearly not from his social station and thus not marriageable, as Jordan is, and thus the putative fiancee need not be bothered by a mere summer romance while Nick takes his pleasure with the girl from New Jersey.Nick also assures Daisy and Jordan that the telephone call Tom receives from Wilson, after Wilson has discovered Myrtles infidelity, is a bona fide deal (122) the deal Tom has offered Wilson, however, is anything but in favourable faith he has used the potential cut-rate sale of the car as a way to approach Wilsons garage to talk with Myrtle. His actions, car for woman, are repeated when he takes Gatsbys car to drive to New York City in exchange for Daisy. And Nick describes Tom oxymoronically as a priggish libertine (137). We also have Fitzgeralds assault through Tom Buchanan and Jordan Baker on the remnants of muscular Christianity and the Frank Merriwell novels he grew up with. The 20s were the era of Babe Ruths carousings and infidelities, missing games due to what sports writers reported euphemistically as stomach aches, due to the Babes exceptional eating, which they may have been, in conjunction with massive hangovers, or possibly alcohol poisoning or even venereal disease.(2) His two daughters were born out of wedlock, not reported by the papers.Nor was Ty Cobbs racism, not that most Americans at the time would have cared. Sports writers protected athletes to preserve the image of them as role models. The book jacket from a Frank Merriwell reprint says Franks deeds will appeal to every boy and girl who strives for fair play and seeks to purif y or to excel. The inside copy calls the series of novels Fascinating stories of athletics. They are extremely high in moral tone and cannot fail to be of immense service to every boy who reads them (251).(3) Merriwell was an All-American football player at Yale, linking him to Tom Buchanan, who was a national figure at Yale (10), and who is not of high moral tone, cheating on his wife during their stay at Santa Barbara (82), in Chicago (139), and again on Long Island. But unlike the Merriwell book copy that calls the book beneficial only to boys, Fitzgerald is an equal-opportunity employer, allowing Jordan Baker to be both a sportswoman and an incorrigible liar and cheat at golf (62).Why write active national figures in sport only to tear them down? Why pepper the novel with paradoxes and oxymorons? Fitzgerald saw contradictions in the national psyche. Malcolm Cowleys image of Fitzgerald as the man at a dance and also the poor boy outside with his nose pressed to the glass admir ing and wondering how much everything cost is apropos (xv) Fitzgerald saw both sides and recorded both. His statement in The Crack Up that the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in the headspring at once, and still retain the ability to function (69) speaks to his sensory faculty of doublenesses and contradictions in America, and he strove to record them, even as one reality denied another dream. His awareness of his own self-contradictionsrealistic romantic, spoiled priestcreated a style incorporating contradictions. The country was changing in many ways. It was still ostensibly a Puritan nation, until now sex was everywhere.A production-mode economy was shifting to a consumer economy. The automobile had changed living, travel, dating, and business in the United States (subject of other books, not this paper), and Fitzgerald emphasizes this change with his frequent mention of carsNicks, Toms, Gatsbys several, Wilsonsand wayside garages wi th new red gas-pumps (25). The middle classes were rising on the post-war prosperity that, until 1929, seemed as if it could not end. Nick is a draw salesman, and Young Englishmen were all selling something bonds or insurance or automobiles. They were agonizingly aware of the easy money in the vicinity and convinced it was theirs for a few words in the right key (46). Myrtle dreams of marrying Tom and improving her station, and Mr. McKee needs only an introduction to Toms due east formal friends to sustain up the social and financial ladder, figured by that Jacobs ladder, the blocks of the sidewalk that mounted to a secret place above the trees (117).Fitzgeralds allusion to Lothrop Stoddard by way of Tom points to the fervent eugenics movement of the day (208), and Tom fears that his aristocratic position is challenged by non-Nordic races and by nobodies from nowhere (137) is seconded by Mr. Sloane from East Egg who is haughtily determined that Gatsby should not attend his din ner party (109). And their fears have some justification, as the guest list from Gatsbys party reveals, with its intermingling of old money and nouveaux riches, of elegant and coarse Homeric Ulysses linked to common Swett, Southern nobility Stonewall Jackson married to Jewish Abrams, a menagerie of Civets, Hornbeams, Blackbucks, and Leeches together with such obvious immigrants as Mulready, Cohen, Da Fontano, and Rot-Gut Ferret, along with Belchers, Smirkes, and a Hip (66-67). The old established order, figured by Daisys and Jordans privileged white maidhood in segregated Louisville, is under assault, as indicated by the incursion into society of recent immigrants and by the Negroes driven by a white chauffeur (73).Gandal states that Gatsbys officership was another such sign of change, promotion by meritocracy rather than by family or education alone. But these changes in reality were not accompanied by corresponding changes in the national myths. Athletes were heroes, reality be da mned. African-Americans could hire white chauffeurs, but their opportunities, even in the non-segregated North, were limited, and they were still subject to prejudice, as Nicks reaction to them makes clear. Despite our myth of a classless society, classes were still very distinct in 1925, as Fitzgerald knew all too well from his experience as a poor boy at Princeton and in his courtship of Ginevra King, (4) and as Nick points out in his distinction between West Egg and East Egg (9). Mr. Sloan and Tom Buchanan insist on their own social superiority to Gatsby, just as Nick does to Wolfsheim and to the girl from the accounting department of his bank.Even Daisy finally realizes the safety of staying with her own kind, those of her social class, however repellent her husband is. Despite our national myth of equal opportunity, it does not exist, as we know but Gatsby doesnt. He thinks that he can do anything, even repeat the past (116). Not being a sports hero, like the aforementioned Ba be Ruth or Ty Cobb (who retired blotto with Coca Cola and GE stock), Gatsbys opportunities for the quick cash to win Daisy are limited, so he turns to crime, as did many during Prohibition. Corruption was pandemic, from Al Capone to Teapot Dome, the sale of national oil reserves by the Secretary of the Interior. Fitzgerald mentions two so-called robber barons, men who built huge industries through monopolization, John D. Rockefeller (31) and James J. cumulus (176) (whose mansion was up the street from the Fitzgeralds St. Paul home), men who saw the opportunity (78), just as Wolfsheim did in fixing the World Series.The line between sharp business practice and criminal activity was thin and almost invisible then (and recently as well), as Fitzgerald has Gatsby imply when talking to Tom about Walter Chase (141), a friend of Toms who came to Gatsby looking for money. One day selling alcohol was legal the next it wasnt. One day monopolies were good business then they were declared ille gal. Getting a card from the pplice commissioner to fix traffic violations is simply a courtesy fixing the World Series is criminal. Tom, Myrtle, Jay, and Daisy all commit adultery. Some students may think Tom and Myrtles affair is cheap and disgusting, Jays and Daisys romantic, but both are the similar morally and legally, yet we still have the myth of family values preached to us, despite the behavior of our legislators.Nick feels himself morally superior to Toms infidelities, Jordans lies, to Wolfsheims and Gatsbys criminal acts, yet hes an accessory after the fact of murder, concealing vital evidence from the police. Myrtles sister Katherine lies at her sisters inquest, a loyal act of perjury that Nick praises as showing a surprising amount of character (171). Lovely Daisy is a hit-and-run killer.Appearances are deceiving. The America that Fitzgerald portrays is riddled with corruption, yet we still maintain the myth of the city on the hill, the green breast of the new world (1 89), the shine to the world for democracy and opportunity. I have difficulty crediting Gatsby as a coherent human being, but as a symbol of the elusive American dream, I find him perfect. He consummately embodies the contradictory qualities of this country, our saying one thing while doing another, our clinging to myths that have little basis in reality. As a well-behaved, socially conscious crook, he is a paradox, an oxymoron, and an exemplary American.